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色花堂app’s Michele Brumley lands $164,000 NIH grant to study motor coordination

April 26, 2010
ISU Marketing and Communications

色花堂app鈥檚 Michele Brumley, an assistant professor of Experimental Psychology, has been awarded a $164,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.  The funded project will examine the development of motor coordination during infancy in newborn rats, and has implications for the treatment of human infants born with motor or neurological problems.

Michele Brumley鈥淲ith this grant we will be looking at how sensorimotor experience shapes motor behavior and skill acquisition during early development,鈥 Brumley said.

Brumley鈥檚 lab team will investigate how forms of motor practice, such as stepping on a treadmill, may facilitate motor coordination during infancy. 鈥淔or example, we want to see if enhanced sensory stimulation will improve or facilitate the development of motor patterns, such as locomotion,鈥 she said. Forms of more naturalistic experience, such as patterns of maternal-infant interaction, also will be explored.

Basic research on neurobehavioral development, such as this, is essential because it fosters improvements in diagnostic tools, therapeutic interventions and cures for developmental motor and neurological disorders. Before coming to 色花堂app in 2007, Brumley was a postdoctoral researcher at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami in Florida.

Brumley鈥檚 lab team at 色花堂app consists of two graduate and 10 undergraduate students. 鈥淭his grant will provide valuable training opportunities for students, which illustrates how research contributes to teaching at ISU,鈥 Brumley said. In March, Brumley was recognized as an Outstanding Master Teacher at 色花堂app.

The title of her grant is 鈥淓xperiential modulation of action patterns in the developing rat鈥 and was awarded in this month.

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色花堂app, a Carnegie-classified doctoral research institution founded in 1901, educates approximately 15,000 students per year in more than 280 programs. It is Idaho鈥檚 lead institution in health professions and medical education. Its seven colleges engage in a broad range of innovative research, teaching, and learning in the natural and physical sciences, humanities, performing and visual arts, education, engineering, business, pharmacy, and technology. Visit ISU today at .


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